Put Heavy Work on the Cheap Lane

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Not every AI seat costs the same. One desk burns expensive credits on every long read. Another can chew through research, critiques, and first drafts for a fraction of the price. If you run both through the same chat, you are paying premium rates for grunt work.

An AI desk that ships real client work needs a cost map, not a single favorite model for everything.

The tip

Sort the job before you start it. Heavy reading, long research, and first-pass drafts go on the cheap lane. The expensive seat stays for short decisions, final review, publish gates, and anything that must leave under your name.

How to run it

  • Name two lanes in your standing rules: cheap (research, reading, first drafts) and expensive (decisions, edits, sends)
  • Write handoffs as a numbered checklist with the outcome, sources to use, and what “done” means
  • Keep contact details and send authority off the cheap lane. That seat gathers. You (or the expensive seat) decide and send
  • Review the cheap lane’s output in a short pass. Fix tone and facts. Do not redo the whole research run on premium credits

This is especially useful when one agent sits on a generous or cheaper plan and another sits on metered credits. The expensive desk should feel quiet most of the day. That silence is the point.

What not to do

  • Paste a 40-page brief into the expensive chat “just to be safe”
  • Ask the cheap lane to send email, post publicly, or invent policy
  • Re-run the same research on both lanes because you distrust the first pass without reading it
  • Leave the routing rule only in your head. Write it once so every wake follows it

Paste-ready rule

Cheap-lane rule:
1) Heavy reading, research, and first drafts go on the cheap lane.
2) The expensive seat does decisions, short reviews, publish gates, and anything that leaves under your name.
3) Handoffs are numbered checklists with outcome, sources, and a clear done line.
4) Contact details and send authority stay off the cheap lane.
5) If a job would burn meaningful premium tokens on grunt work, reroute it before you start.

You keep the expensive desk pointed at judgment and customer-facing work. The cheap lane does the miles. That is how a small AI desk stays useful without burning the week by Wednesday.